The Mid South NAMA chapter lunch meeting is about to get started. I’ll post a different photo later. We’re just mingling before eating and doing some social media talk.

Janice Person, Monsanto, and I are tag teaming a presentation. The chapter conducted a member survey prior to the mtg. to find out what level of social media participation the members were involved in and solicit questions. I’ll post more on that later.

In the meantime, you can use the Twitter hashtag #midsouthnama to follow tweets or add you’re own. We’re posing some of the questions there and seeking input. Thank you.

Post Update: Our session has concluded. We had a full one with over 30 attending. That’s really good for a NAMA meeting today. I think this topic is still of great interest to a lot of agricultural companies and member organizations. We had some really good questions that included:

• What is the most significant benefit and most significant drawback (real or potential) of a trade association trying to improve its reputation through a significant commitment to social networking ?
• Is this a viable marketing tool for agriculture yet? Especially considering the average age of farmers is in the high 50’s.
• How widespread is use among ag audiences
• How to make $$ in the ag world with social media?
• How to combat crack-pot posters!
• How do you manage Social Media with existing staff and budget …. full time.
• How are you measuring the value?
• Compared with personal use of social media, how much are farmers using it for business and how much do they want to use it for business?
• Where is it all going?
• How do you manage the proper updating of material and responses and how do you measure the impact?

I invite you to post your responses to these questions in comments. Janice and I provided our answers in our session and would be happy to discuss these topics if you contact us.